Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

General Kuropatkin says that the Russian evacuation of the province of Mukden "was suddenly stopped by an order of Admiral Alexeieff, whose reasons for taking such action have not, to this day, been sufficiently cleared up." The following telegram from Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff of the Russian General Staff to Rear Admiral Abaza, the Tsar's personal representative in St. Petersburg, may throw some light on the subject.

(No. 1.)
TO ADMIRAL ABAZA,
HOUSE NO. 50, FIFTH LINE,
VASSILI OSTROFF, ST. PETERSBURG.

Our enterprises in East meet constantly with opposition from
Dzan-Dzun of Mukden and Taotai of Feng-wang-cheng. Russian
officer-merchants have been sent East to make reconnaissance
and examine places on Yalu. They are accompanied by Khunkhuzes
whom I have hired. The Dzan-Dzun, feeling that he is soon to be
freed from guardianship of Russians, has become awfully impudent,
and has even gone so far as to order Yuan to begin hostile
operations against Russian merchants and Chinese accompanying
them, and to put latter under arrest. Thanks to timely measures
taken by Admiral, this order has not been carried out; but very
fact shows that Chinese rulers of Manchuria are giving themselves
free rein, and, of course, after we evacuate Manchuria, their
impudence, and their opposition to Russian interests, will have
no limit. _Admiral_ (_Alexeieff_) _took it upon himself to order
that Mukden and Yinkow_ (_New Chwang_) _be not evacuated_.[10]
To-day it has been decided to hold Yinkow, but, unfortunately, to
move the troops out of Mukden. _After evacuation of Mukden, state
of affairs, so far as our enterprises are concerned, will be very,
very much worse which, of course, is not desirable._[10] To-morrow
I go to the Yalu myself.

(Signed) MADRITOFF.

Shortly before Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff sent this telegram to Admiral Abaza, Bezobrazoff, who had been several months in the Far East, started for St. Petersburg, with the intention, evidently, of seeing the Tsar and persuading him to order, definitely, a suspension of the evacuation of the province of Mukden, for the reason that "it would inevitably result in the liquidation of the affairs of the timber company." From a point on the road he sent back to Madritoff the following telegram, which bears date of March 26, 1903 (April 8, N. S. )--the very day when the evacuation of the province of Mukden should have been completed, in accordance with the Russo-Chinese agreement of March 26 (April 8, N. S.), 1902:

(No. 2.)

TO MADRITOFF,
PORT ARTHUR.

There will be an understanding attitude toward the affair after
I make my first report. I am only afraid of being too late, as
I shall not get there until the 3rd (April 16, N. S.) and the
Master (Khozain) leaves for Moscow on the 4th (April 17, N. S.).
I will do all that is possible and shall insist on manifestation of
energy in one form or another. Keep me advised and don't get
discouraged. There will soon be an end of the misunderstanding.

(Signed) BEZOBRAZOFF.

On April 11, 1903 (April 24, N. S.), Bezobrazoff sent Madritoff from St. Petersburg a telegram written, evidently, after he had made his first "report" to "the Master." It was as follows:

(No. 3.)

TO MADRITOFF,
PORT ARTHUR.

Everything with me is all right. I hope to get my views adopted
in full as conditions imposed by existing situation and force of
circumstances. I hope that if they ask the opinion of the Admiral
(Alexeieff), he, I am convinced (sic), will give me his support.
That will enable me to put many things into his hands.

(Signed) BEZOBRAZOFF.

General Kuropatkin says that Admiral Alexeieff gave him "repeated assurances that he was wholly opposed to Bezobrazoff's schemes, and that he was holding them back with all his strength"; but the Admiral was evidently playing a double part. While pretending to be in full sympathy with Kuropatkin's hostility to the Yalu enterprise, he was supporting Bezobrazoff's efforts to promote that enterprise, Bezobrazoff rewarded him, and fulfilled his promise to "put many things into his hands" by getting him appointed Viceroy. Kuropatkin says that this appointment was a "complete surprise to him," and it naturally would be, because the Tsar acted on the advice of Bezobrazoff, von Plehve, Alexeieff, and Abaza, and not on the advice of Kuropatkin, Witte, and Lamsdorff. It will be noticed that von Plehve--the powerful Minister of the Interior--is never once mentioned by name in Kuropatkin's narrative. Everything seems to indicate that von Plehve formed an alliance with Bezobrazoff, and that, together, they brought about the dismissal of Witte, who ceased to be Minister of Finance on the 16th of August, 1903 (August 29, N. S.). Anticipating this result of his efforts, and filled with triumph at the prospect opening before him, Bezobrazoff wrote Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff, on the 12th of August, 1903 (August 25, N. S.), as follows:

(No. 4.)

The great saw-mill and the principal trade in timber will be
transferred to Dalny, and this in copartnership with the Ministry
of Finance. The Manchurian Steamship Line will have all our ocean
freight, amounting to twenty-five million feet of timber, and the
business will become international (mirovava). From this you will
understand how I selected my base and my operating lines.

In view of the complete defeat of such clear-sighted statesmen and sane counsellors as Kuropatkin, Witte, and Lamsdorff, there can be no doubt that Bezobrazoff's "base and operating lines" were well "selected."

The document that shows most clearly the interest of the Tsar in the Yalu timber enterprise is a telegram sent to Bezobrazoff at Port Arthur, in November, 1903, by Rear Admiral Abaza, who was then Director of the Special Committee on Far Eastern Affairs, over which the Tsar presided, and who acted as the latter's personal representative in all dealings with Bezobrazoff and the timber company. In the original of this telegram, significant words, such as "Witte," "Emperor," "millions," "garrison," "reinforcement," etc., were in cipher; but when Bezobrazoff read it, he (or possibly his private secretary) interlined the equivalents of the cipher words, and also, in one place, a query as to the significance of "artels"--did it mean chasseurs, or artillery? The following copy was made from the interlined original:

(No. 5.)

From Petersburg, Nov. 14-27, 1903.

TO BEZOBRAZOFF,
PORT ARTHUR.

Witte has told the Emperor that you have already spent the whole
of the two millions. Your telegram with regard to expenditures
has made it possible for me to report on this disgusting slander
and, at the same time, contradict it. Remember that the Master
counts on your not touching a ruble more than the three hundred
without permission in every case. Yesterday I reported again
your ideas with regard to the reinforcement of the garrison and
also with regard to the artels (chasseurs or artillery?) in the
basin. The Emperor directed me to reply that he takes all that
you say into consideration and that, in principle, he approves.
In connection with this, the Emperor again confirmed his order
that the Admiral telegraph directly to him. He expects a telegram
soon, and immediately upon the receipt of the Admiral's statement,
arrangements will be made with regard to the reinforcement of the
garrison, and, at the same time, with regard to the chasseurs
in the basin. In the course of the conversation, the Emperor
expressed the fullest confidence in you.

(Signed) ABAZA.

General Kuropatkin refers, again and again, to the Tsar's "clearly expressed desire that war should be avoided," and he regrets that His Imperial Majesty's "co-workers" "were unable to execute his will." It is more than likely that Nicholas II. did wish to avoid war--if he could do so without impairing the value of the family investment in the Korean timber company--but from the above telegram it appears that, as late as November 27, 1903--only seventy days before the rupture with Japan--he was still disregarding the sane and judicious advice of Kuropatkin, was still expressing "the fullest confidence" in Bezobrazoff, and was still ordering troops to the valley of the Yalu.

THE AMERICANIZING OF ANDRÉ FRANÇOIS

BY

STELLA WYNNE HERRON

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR G. DOVE

"I Wonder," said Andrew F. Biron, manager of the White Star Mine, to his sister, as he watched, with drawn brows, André François, immaculate in a white flannel suit, bare-kneed and sailor-hatted, go down the street attended by the ministering Angélique, "what Providence had against me when it picked me for the father of Andrew François?"

"He is certainly the strangest child I have ever known," answered his sister irrelevantly, "and I have had experience with a good many--an old maid always does, you know."

"What he needs is to mix up with the other boys--to become Americanized. There is too much European varnish on him. It needs to be rubbed off so that the real boy underneath will show through."

"He needs something," assented his sister shortly, for she had looked with none too gracious an eye upon the advent of André François and his _bonne_, the volatile Angélique. "He thinks of nothing except how he is dressed--a miniature fop! He is now ten years old and he is absolutely helpless. He seems never to have learned to do anything for himself. There is no manliness nor independence in him--nothing but a head full of foolish, old-world notions about what is due a gentleman of his standing. As for Angélique, one moment she runs his errands and the next bullies him. Who ever heard of a big boy of ten with a nurse, anyway?" Miss Biron stopped a moment to catch her breath, then continued:

"To be frank with you, Andrew, I think you have been little less than criminal to take so little interest in him as to leave him for eight years in an environment of which you knew nothing. You should have had him home immediately after your wife's death, and not have waited until his grandmother died and the responsibility of your son was literally forced upon you."

"The responsibility of his son." All through a busy morning at the office the phrase remained subconsciously in Mr. Biron's mind. At noon hour, when the work slackened up, he set himself to face and thresh it out, for it was his policy to face and thresh out at the first opportunity any difficulty which confronted him.

For half an hour he paced his office, his hands thrust hard down into his pockets, in his mouth a black, unlighted cigar of the stogie species, upon which he chewed with all the concentrated violence which he would have liked to expend upon the problem in hand. His son--how well he remembered the little two-year-old codger, with his serious blue eyes and his fleece of yellow hair, whom he had taken tight in his arms and told not to forget his daddy, as he bid goodby on the steamer to his pretty, pale French wife going back on a visit to her native land.

After her death, little André François had at once found snug quarters in the home of his aristocratic Parisian grandmother, Madame Fouchette, a grand dame of the old régime. She wrote and begged to keep him. She said he would be placed in a good school--the best, indeed, in France--where, as a rule, none except the sons of noblemen were admitted. Year after year had drifted by, and the busy mine-manager in Colorado, occupied with a thousand and one matters of daily importance, had sent a monthly check of generous figure, together with a quarter-page of hurriedly type-written, kindly words, accompanied at Christmas, and at what he approximately made out to be André François' birthday, by a great miscellaneous box of toys. He religiously selected these as his wife had advised him to select them on that first Christmas--for he instinctively mistrusted his own judgment in such matters--and varied them only in the matter of quantity, which he increased each year in allowance for the boy's growth.

Perhaps it was because he always pictured him as a tyro of two, unsteady on his legs, principally experimental in his speech, that he was so unprepared for the real André François, the above, plus eight formative years of growth in the French capital, an aristocratic grandmother's idolatry, and the training of a school where, "as a rule, only the sons of noblemen were received."

Mr. Biron recalled with a rueful smile that first meeting with his son and heir. André François, self-possessed, slim, and aristocratic, cultivating already the airs and graces of the young boulevardier, greeted the manager of the White Star with a careful--for he was none too sure of where the accent fell in his mother-tongue----

"I am delighted, my father," and kissed him ceremoniously, first on one cheek, then on the other. After which he devoted himself to directing Angélique--who had been his _bonne_ ever since his mother's death and in whose care he had come across the ocean--in the disposal of his four trunks. Madame Fouchette, during her life, had spared neither time nor attention in providing André François with as many new suits and caps as his blue-blooded playmates.

The little raw town of fifteen hundred inhabitants, still half mining-camp, was not prepared for the youthful scion of the Old World, and regarded him as a huge joke. As for Angélique, in her high heels and infinitesimal aprons, with her coquettish airs and her showers of exclamations, nothing like her had ever been seen, except in an overnight show, where the traditional French maid, between a song and dance, whisked imaginary dust off parlor chairs.

At school André François was under a double disadvantage. In the class-room, he not only knew more than any other boy, but frequently and authoritatively corrected the teacher. In the yard his white flannel sailor suit, with its embroidered anchor and immense soft, red silk bow in front, his jaunty round sailor hat and dainty shoes--it had become the mode in Paris at that time to follow the English style in children's dress--were regarded with derisive and hostile looks by the sturdy blue- and brown-overalled town boys. Indeed, the little transplanted Parisian, as he stood in line with his fellows, looked very much like a lonely orchid in a bunch of dusty field-flowers.

In the yard André François did not shine. His attitude was marked in the eyes of the indigenous youth by a supercilious stupidity. He neither knew nor cared for baseball, football, or any of the lesser sports which excite young America at playtime. He had, indeed, at first extended tentative invitations to a chosen few of his class-mates to engage in a fencing bout, but, finding that art entirely unknown, he contented himself, during recess, with sitting on the bench and reading from a French book, over the top of which he sometimes stared at his hot, excited school-mates with insolent superiority.

They returned his contempt with full measure. One and all looked upon André François as a special brand of "Dago"--under which general head they classified all things Latin--protected from their scorn and patriotism by an arbitrary higher power in the form of a father who was a mine manager.

André François, in turn, confided to his father that nobody but ignorant peasants, with whom no gentleman could associate, attended the school.

So matters stood without a change in either direction two weeks after André François' arrival in town. No change of environment seemed strong enough to move him from his accustomed ways of thought. Every morning he started out for school at a quarter of nine followed by the omnipresent Angélique. Every afternoon he returned at three o'clock, still followed by Angélique.

"Angélique! A nurse! A _bonne_!" As the manager of the White Star thought of her, he nearly bit the cigar, upon which he was chewing, in half. All the militant Americanism in him rose in revolt. He remembered his own bare-footed, swaggering youth, independent as the wind, insolent as a king. And now his son----. He stopped short in his pacing and stared wrathfully out into the street, which, like all the streets of the town, ended abruptly, without any preliminary slopes, in a sheer wall of rock which went up and up and up into a rugged mountain peak.

It chanced that school had just let out for the noon hour, and down the middle of the street, whistling to the full of his lungs, swinging in a circle around his head a long leather strap with a blue calico-covered book at the end for a weight, swaggered a sturdy specimen of young America. Mr. Biron gazed at him with an envious eye and sighed. Then a thought, sudden and sharp, popped into his head. He hesitated for a moment. But why not? Anything was worth trying.

The manager of the White Star was a man of action, so, without wasting further time in debate with himself, he beat a loud tattoo with his knuckles on the window glass. The whistling stopped. He crooked his finger and motioned, and the deed was done. A moment later the ground-glass door opened, and a chunky, red-haired boy, with a belligerent eye, stood expectantly before him. The newcomer placed himself so that the big iron office safe furnished a background for him, and as he stood there with his feet wide apart, his hands in his pockets, he seemed as solidly planted as it. A shaft of noonday sunlight, coming through a side window, struck his hair and made a rubescent halo around his freckled face. The manager of the White Star looked him up and down, and the boy eyed him back look for look. At length Mr. Biron cleared his throat.

"What is your name, my lad?" he asked.

"James Joseph McCarthy," answered the boy, in the same quick, phonographic monotone that he had used on his first day at school, when the teacher had asked him the same question.

"Ah, yes--do you know my son, Andrew Francis Biron?"

"Sure. Most everybody knows Andray Franswa."

"And what do you think of--er--André François?"

The boy looked at him searchingly. "You oughter know--he's your kid," he said tersely.

"I know what _I_ think," said Mr. Biron, "but I want to know what you think. That's what I brought you in for. I want to get some data on the subject."

The boy ran his hand through his hair, and his brow puckered, as he struggled to find a phrase by which to sum up his impression of André François. Then he said:

"Ah, gee----" he made an abortive effort, out of regard for parental feelings, to mitigate the vast contempt in his voice, "he's just a darn sissy."

"Um--I see. Are there any more sissies in town?"

"Nope. Not now. There uster be one onest, about a year ago, but he's all right now. We licked him till he got all right."

"And do you intend to lick André François until he gets all right?"

The scion of the McCarthys looked at him suspiciously for a moment, but seeing in his face rather a desire for honest information than the guile of a parent, he answered:

"Nope. Nobody dast to touch him."

"Why?" asked Mr. Biron with a gleam of hope, "would he fight?"

"Who? Him? Him _fight_? I guess _not_. It's cause you're his dad. My dad, he said that if I dast to lay a finger on Andray Franswa, he'd skin me alive--an' the rest o' the kids, their dads told 'em the same thing."

"I see," said the manager of the White Star, and he saw also that a certain disadvantage went with being the employer of nearly every man in the town.

He took a thoughtful turn around the office, for his conscience gave him a twinge at the critical moment, then stopped abruptly in front of James Joseph and took from his pocket a bright, new silver dollar.

"See this, Jimmie?" he asked, balancing it seductively on the tip of his index finger, "I will give you this, and further, I will see that no complaint is made to your father--if you lick André François."

Each of Jimmie's eyes grew as big and as round as the dollar.

"Sure? D' yer mean it? Gee, that'd be fine. There's goin' to be a circus next week in Briggs' lot, and us fellows is savin' up. Say--is that what you just said on the dead square?"

"On the dead square," said André François' father solemnly.

Jimmie held out his hand for the dollar. "Sure," he said, "I'll lick Andray Franswa. I'll lay low till that crazy Angélique is out of the way. Burbank, the assayer's assistant, is soft on her, and she stops to talk to him every afternoon, an' Andray Franswa walks as far as from school to the assayer's office alone. I'll get him then. I'm boss o' the gang, an' I kin lick fine. Onest I licked a kid an' he wasn't able to be out fer a week."

"Wait," said Mr. Biron, a little alarmed at the enthusiasm he had invoked. "Remember--you are acting under orders, and your orders are not to hurt him. Just roll him around in the mud good and plenty--and, Jimmie, spoil that white sailor suit."

Jimmie's eyes filled with fellow feeling. For the first time during the interview he and the White Star manager were equals.

"I guess you was a pretty nice kid yourself onest," he said, "an' I know how you must feel 'bout Andray Franswa."

He hesitated a moment, his face twitched with a fierce internal struggle, then he thrust out his arm straight from the shoulder and handed back to Mr. Biron the price of his service.

"I--I'd be glad to do it as a favor," he said.

"Thank you," said André François' father gravely, and he took and pocketed the dollar.

As Jimmie was about to leave the office he put out a detaining hand.

"Oh, by the way," he remarked, with elaborate casuality, "you said something of a circus in Briggs' lot--I can't get away myself, at present, but if you'd take this and go, and let me know if there is anything good, you'd oblige me greatly."

Jimmie McCarthy left the office of the White Star with his ethics and his honor satisfied, and with a dollar in the pocket of his blue overalls.

Thus was enacted the preliminary part of the plot to Americanize André François, _fils_.

The following afternoon the manager of the White Star sat at his office desk, a file of papers before him. But his attention wavered, and the nearer the clock hands drew to three, the less grew his concentration upon the file. At last the expected happened. The ground-glass door burst open, and in rushed the immaculate Angélique, her entire person in such dishevelment as the Rue St. Honoré had never seen. Her cap hung by one pin from her black hair, her ruffled swiss apron was under one arm. By the hand she dragged after her the panting André François. His hat was gone, his hair wet, his white sailor suit streaked terra cotta from the clayey mud of the street. His red tie, however, still made a brave flare of color under one ear.

"Father," he said in a high, excited voice, "I have been attacked!"

Angélique motioned him to be quiet.

"Oh, Monsieur Bir-on, oh, sair," she burst out, her round eyes becoming perfect spheres in her excitement, "Monsieur André François have been attack'. I have jus' stop to spik to a gentleman for a so leetle moment--when I look a-r-r-ound and zee thees so ter-r-ible boy make the tackle at Monsieur André François' legs. And nex'--O, _ciel_! I zee Monsieur André François high in the air, and then--splash! _Quelle horreur!_ down in the depths of the mud pud-dle, and thees boy r-r-ool heem r-round an' r-round an' r-r-round. _Barbare!_ _Sauvage!_" Angélique's voice broke, and she buried her face in her abbreviated apron to shut out the memory of a sight so uncivilized.

"Father," said André François, trembling with passion, "you will have him punished at once--publicly, so that every one may know that the indignity has been wiped out?"

"My boy," said Mr. Biron quietly, placing his hand on his son's shoulder, "I am not lord of a feudal principality. I cannot interfere. You will have to fight your own fights."

"But," said André François, angry tears rushing to his eyes, "I cannot fight this peasant--I am a gentleman." And he drew himself up with a jerk, in his drabbled sailor suit, to his full three feet eight. This assumption of dignity was not without discomfort, for the muddy water from his over-long hair dripped down his neck in the back and into his eyes in the front.

"Of a certainty," affirmed Angélique with finality, "he is a gentleman. Madame Fouchette so raised heem."

"You will have to settle it your own way, Andrew. If you are too good to fight him, and he is not too good to fight you, I do not see what you can do--except run."

"I will _not_ run," cried André François, his voice becoming shrill and childish with impotent rage. "I want him punished."

"I can do nothing for you," said his father shortly. "You had better go home now to your aunt and have your suit changed."

"_Allons_," said Angélique indignantly, and, catching André François by the hand, she started out. At the door she paused long enough to say devoutly, fixing the so unnatural father with a basilisk glance.

"_Dieu vous garde, mon pauvre enfant._"

The manager of the White Star even thought he heard a "_Bête!_" as the door was closed so decisively that one would almost say it was slammed. All of which the so unnatural parent endured with equanimity, and turned to his delayed files with a patient if dubious smile, for he had begun to do his parental duty as he saw it, and anything he began, whether it was a lockout, a new policy, or the training of his son, he saw through to the bitter end.

The next morning, when the White Star manager reached his office--and he got there early, for he began his day's work when his office boy was still comfortably snoring---he found a small boy leaning against the door in the stiff and resigned position of a guard waiting to be relieved from duty. The only parts of him which moved were the toes of his bare legs, and these nimble members dibbled the clayey earth in front of the door-step.

As soon as this apparition caught sight of Mr. Biron, it straightened up into life.

"Kin I see you, Mr. Biron?" asked the boy eagerly, "on a matter o' business?"

"Certainly," said the manager of the White Star, "just step into the office."

The boy followed him in through the ground-glass door, shifted from one bare foot to the other, cleared his throat, then without further preliminary said:

"Say--d' you want Andray Franswa licked to-day?" Then, fixing him with a bargaining eye, "I'll do it dandy fer seventy-five cents. I kin fight 'most as good as Jimmie--I uster be the biggest kid here before he come an' licked me," he added, with reminiscent pride in a past glory.

Mr. Biron looked at him thoughtfully a moment, then said:

"I engaged Jimmie for the first job, and he did it satisfactorily. I think there may be a tacit contract existing between us that I give him, at least, the refusal of the rest."

"Nope," said the boy. "Jimmie, he ain't no pig. He told the bunch, 'You fellers go 'round an' see if yer kin git nuf for the circus what's comin'.' I bin waitin' a long time so's to be early nuf."

"I see," said Mr. Biron, "Jimmie does not believe in monopolies. He is a despot, but an enlightened one."

"Kin I have the job, then?"

"Very well," said Mr. Biron, "I engage you to lick André François--but with this reservation--mind you do not hurt him, and I will pay you the standard rate of one dollar for a first-class job."

This was the first but not the last of the manager's visitors. It was Saturday, and that whole morning the office of the White Star was besieged by applicants for a "job." Mr. Biron had his pick of the entire bellicose population of the town between the ages of nine and thirteen, and several more nefarious bargains were secretively struck in the shadow of the big iron safe, behind the discreet ground-glass door of the White Star office.

That afternoon Mr. Biron found it difficult to concentrate on the work before him, for, reasoning from cause to effect, and having produced the cause, he was subconsciously expectant of another visit from André and Angélique. Nothing, however, occurred to disturb him and, as he closed up his desk and safe, preparatory to leaving, he smiled grimly to himself.

"I never was stumped by a proposition yet," he muttered half aloud, as he walked home in the sunset, "and André François isn't going to be the first. He _must_ have some red blood in his veins--his grandfather fought at Gettysburg, and I could fight my weight in wildcats at his age."

As he ate his dinner, half an hour later, his sister recounted to him the events of the day.

"Andrew Francis was attacked again," she said, casually nodding toward André François, who ate in silence--for she was a woman of sense. "He came home again covered with mud from head to foot. Angélique says he refused to run and she could do nothing----"

"But no," interrupted the _bonne_ eagerly, and her words came like a string of firecrackers exploded by a small boy on the Fourth of July, "he came with a quickness--like _zat_!" and she clapped her hands. "Before I know, he have come behin' and trip Monsieur André François up from his legs. Zen I try to grab thees boy, but he is of a so great slipperiness as an eel! He have hit Monsieur André François--_whack_! He have poke heem an' make heem to fall into the mud. Zen he is away with a quickness--_zipp_! No person is of a similar quickness to catch heem."

During this display of wordy pyrotechnics, the son and heir of the house sat in sullen silence and broke his bread into small pieces. When it ended, he suddenly looked up.

"Father," he said, "I do not want Angélique to take me to school any longer. She is a fool."

"Sank you, sair," said the lady referred to sarcastically, "you have a great gratitude when I protec' your life." Then she turned to the manager of the White Star:

"Sair, I have the pleasure to inform you of somesing. In one month I am about to marry myself to the Mr. Burbank--he who makes known what is in the rocks."

"Kind of sudden, wasn't it, Angélique?" asked Mr. Biron.

"It was of a suddenness," said Angélique blushing. "I was greatly of a desire to go back to France, but I could not, an' the nex' bes' zing--zat is to marry myself. I mus' have a protector in thees so savage land where even the children are bloodthirsty. I am not of a nervousness to stan' everysing. _Voilà!_"

The next morning Andrè François went to school minus his familiar. During the week and a half that followed he was "attacked" with startling frequency and regularity. Almost every afternoon he came home with his clothes muddy and torn.

He was grimly silent about the details of these mishaps.

Angélique was in despair.

"Ah, Madame," she said to Miss Biron, "in one short month he will not have a stitch to wear--out of the largesse of four trunks full. And the las' command of Madame Fouchette, it was 'Angélique, always make Monsieur André François to look like the little prince.' _Ciel!_ how can one make heem to look like the little prince when thees so savage boys tear off his clothes? But I do my ver' bes'--I darn and darn and darn heem."

André François made no one his confidant, but day by day he grew more somber and silent. His early garrulity was quite gone. Instead of the air of hauteur which characterized him on his entrance to the town, he now had a pathetic droop. He even became careless about his clothes.

"He used to be so proud, so debonair," said Angélique sadly, "when he have the clean, white suit on, he is like the peacock, he know he is beautiful--but now--he does not care what he have on. No!"

"What can be the matter?" asked Miss Biron anxiously, for she was really worried by André François' looks; "he has never been seriously hurt in these little school-boy fights."

"_Eh, bien!_ Madame! Is it not of a seriousness to be wound' in the pride? To be insult'? Monsieur André François has been made the gross insult many times. Those insult, they knaw heem in his heart. He zink. He zink all the time now. He zink of those many insult'! Some day he will have his revengement--you see."

About this time the manager of the White Star noticed a falling off in the number of applicants for his peculiar variety of "job." There was a slump in the André François market. One morning he called in a youngster whom he saw going early to school, stated his terms, and made his usual proposal. The boy hesitated a few moments, then said:

"It'll cost yer a dollar an' a quarter now, Mr. Biron. Yer see, 'taint so easy as 'twas at first. 'Course Andray Franswa never runs, an' it's easy t' git him, but he's growin' awful savage. He kicks an' bites somethin' fierce, sir. He nearly chewed Harry Peters' finger offer him day 'fore yesterday."

The manager paid the extra quarter without any demur.

It was about this time also that Mr. Biron made a discovery which gratified him. He found, secreted under a pillow in the window-seat where André François usually sat, a dusty, copiously diagrammed book entitled, "The Manly Art of Self-Defense." It was an edition of twenty years ago, and had been used by Mr. Biron himself during his college days.

He put it back carefully and held his silence.

The following evening he proceeded in an experimental, roundabout way to get into a conversation with his son.

"Andrew," he said, with sociable casualness, to his heir, who now always ensconced himself in the window-seat directly after dinner, and kept a moody silence until Angélique took him off to bed, "you have never told me about your school days in France."

Accepting this remark as the statement of an irrefutable fact, André François merely remained politely silent.

"What do you do for recreation? What sport do you have now, for instance?"

"We fence, father," said André François, listlessly.

"Ah, yes," said the White Star manager, introducing his subject in as elaborately casual a way as a politician about to ask for a favor, "just so. Well, you see we don't do much fencing in America, not very much. Boxing, now, is more in our line."

A gleam of interest, which was not lost upon his father, shot into André François' weary eyes.

"Father," he asked timidly, "are you familiar with the manly art of self-defense?"

"I am, my son," answered the manager of the White Star gravely.

André François gazed at him questioningly a moment, then drew the manual from under the sofa cushion.

"I have been practising some of the things described in this book," he said, slowly opening it and disclosing diagrams of a heavy-muscled individual executing a wonderful curve along a dotted line marked "a----a----a," "but I am unable to make out the explanations attached to most of these figures. If you could show me the rudiments----" he finished tentatively.

It was at this point that the manager of the White Star joyously threw diplomacy to the winds.

"You bet I will," he cried enthusiastically, "we will have our first lesson to-night in the attic," and grasping his son's arm he started off.

Miss Biron and Angélique, sedately sewing by the fire in the next room, were electrified to see, a moment later, the manager of the White Star and André François rush madly through, banging a door at either end in their flight, and laughing at the top of their voices. They also stayed awake that night beyond their usual retiring time, for strange noises emanated from the attic long after the hour when a well-conducted father and son should have been in bed.

The next morning the manager of the White Star let the applicant in waiting know that no further business would be transacted, and the word went forth among the members of the gang that he would pay for no more André François lickings, and would tolerate no unpaid-for ones.

So, by the ultimatum of his father, André François went whither he would, unmolested except by word of mouth. But he underwent such martyrdom as only a small boy can receive at the hands of others of his kind.

Not only did the gang remember and resent his former attitude of superiority, but they looked on him as a source of revenue taken from them. His presence irritated them as the presence of a government-owned railroad might irritate a company of magnates shorn of their profits. His first position had been marked at least by a certain uniqueness and dignity. He _had_ never been licked, even if he could have been.

Now, however, he was the lowest of the low. In the democracy of the gang, where might was right, he was a pariah, a proven coward, licked by each and every member, and ought, by the law of the survival of the fittest, to be kicked out. He was only allowed to intrude his presence on suffrance, because a higher power artificially protected him.

At recess, in school, he sat on the well-worn bench that ran around the yard and watched the others play or fight. No one ever spoke to him, except now and then to throw a taunt his way.

"Where's nursie, Annie?"

"Hello, sissy--are yer lost?"

"Where'd yer git that suit?" and similar personalities greeted him when one of the boys chanced to notice his presence. Sometimes, as he walked home, pebbles and bits of hardened mud were sent richochetting after him, but this was the extent of any assault, for the manager of the White Star, sitting behind his ground-glass door, had it within his power to speak a potent word to the father of any boy who disobeyed him.

André François seldom spoke back, but his silence had something grim in it, and there was a portentous light in his eye.

At home he never complained, and Angélique, rejoiced that the régime of physical violence was over, snatched the time between stitches on a wonderful, beruffled trousseau, to make him "look like the little prince." Only his father knew how he spent his time every evening in the attic, and what passionate energy he put into his work. Neither alluded to it, but both knew that the lessons had an ultimate object.

And, one day, three weeks from the time he took his first boxing lesson, this object was unexpectedly accomplished.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and the gang, freed from the tyranny of school and the irritation of Saturday morning chores, were joyously disporting themselves in a vacant lot at the corner of the street. The first inning of a baseball game was just over, and the overalled players were lying on the ground disputing certain fine points of the play with the audience.

André François stopped, leaned on the top rail of the fence, and gazed at them a trifle wistfully. Jimmie McCarthy's roving eye discovered him, and he yelled out:

"You'd better run along, Annie--nursie will be out lookin' fer yer in a minnut."

The gang laughed flatteringly at the subtle wit of their leader. André François' face flushed a vivid crimson and his eyes darkened. Then he electrified the gang by leaping over the fence and rushing straight up to the redoubtable Jimmie.

He thrust out his chin and yelled up into the face of the surprised leader:

"I'll show you if I'm an Annie or not. D'you want to fight?"

Jimmie stood dumb with amazement a moment, then he laughed long and loud, for his sense of humor was Irish; and the whole gang joined in.

"S-a-a-y," he said, "yer wanter git licked again, d'yer? You must'er got inter the habit. I tell yer what--I got a baby brother two years old ter home. I'll go fetch him, and the two o' yez kin have it out."

It was here that André François' early training enabled him to make an impression. He stood up on his toes, as he had once seen the Marquis de Boissé stand up on his toes, and slapped Jimmie McCarthy across the mouth with his open palm, as he had seen that noble marquis slap a count of France.

But what followed was not an exchange of ultra courteous priorities to a duel. It was a good American fight in the middle of a ring of small boys, and what happened is what always happens when natural and scientific force stand up before each other. That fight will be long remembered in the annals of the gang, which, like the records of the great Homeric fights or the sagas of the primitive Northmen, are first handed down by word of mouth.

"I wished yer'd seen it, kid," said Charlie Brown, to his wide-eyed, freckled-faced junior, whom he was trying to bring up in the right way. "It'd bin an eddycation fer yer. Andray Franswa jumped round jest like he was made o' rubber. Every time that Jim grabbed fer him, he was on the other side an' had landed him one on the nose. Gee, yer oughter seen it bleed--it was worse'n the time Jim beat Buck Paxell. Now, Teddy, yer want ter keep yer eye on Andray Franswa, an' do same as yer see him doin'--'cause he's goin' ter be a great man some day like Jim Jeffries--see?"

That afternoon the manager of the White Star chanced to look out of his window, and he saw André François, with his white sailor hat, fashioned after that of Prince Edward, set rakishly over one ear, his hands in his pockets, whistling at the top of his lungs, come down the street. His face was muddy and bleeding, a great scratch cut across it from ear to ear, his hair was wild and tangled, but his swagger was that of a conqueror, and he took the middle of the road. An admiring concourse of small boys followed along at a respectful distance.

Mr. Biron smiled to himself. Then he took down his ledger, for he was a careful man of business, and read over a certain page. On it was written fourteen times:

"To Andrew Francis, licking... $1.00"

"Um," said the manager of the White Star softly at the end of the addition, "fourteen dollars." Then he took another look out of the window:

"I never made a better bargain in my life."

AIN'T YOU GWINE TO COME?

BY

EDMUND VANCE COOKE

De debbil done ast me to be his chile;
De debbil he's allus a follerin';
I run de debbil foh mos' a mile;
Don' you hear de debbil a-hollerin'?
I'se gwine to jine de fambly of de Lohd;
I'se gwine to glory in de mawnin';
I'se gwine to be bohn in de grace of Gohd;
Ain't you gwine to come to my bohnin'?

_Come along-a sisteh, come along-a bruddeh,
Come along-a one an' a come along de uddeh,
Bring along a frien' an' a-bring along anuddeh;
Ain't you gwine to come to my bohnin'?_

De debbil done temp' me to visit his roof;
De debbil he's allus a follerin';
I stomp my foot on de debbil's hoof;
Don' you hear de debbil a-hollerin'?
I'se gwine to jine de fambly of de Lohd;
De debbil's done quit his harryin';
I'se gwine to be married to de son of Gohd;
Ain't you gwine to come to my marryin'?

_Come along-a sisteh, come along-a bruddeh,
Come along-a one an' a come along de uddeh,
Bring along a frien' an a-bring along anuddeh;
Ain't you gwine to come to my marryin'?_

De debbil done beg me to sail his ship;
De debbil he's allus a follerin';
I smack my han' on de debbil's lip;
Don' you hear de debbil a hollerin'?
I'se gwine to sail in de ship of de Lohd
Dat's a runnin' to glory at de ferryin';
I'se gwine to be buried in de grace of Gohd;
Ain't you gwine to come to my buryin'?

_Come along-a sisteh an' a come along-a bruddeh,
Come along-a one an' a come along de uddeh,
Bring along a frien' an' a bring along anuddeh;
Ain't you gwine to come to my buryin'?_

JUNGLE BLOOD

BY

ELMORE ELLIOTT PEAKE

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER JACK DUNCAN

He was a coal-black, box-headed negro, of a bulk and stature never before admitted to the dining-room of the Bluegrass Hotel. The blacks preferred by the management of that fastidious hostelry were agile, under-sized fellows with round heads and small hands; and Moss Harper would assuredly never have effected an entrance to the dining-room, had it not been for a waiters' strike, which made almost any kind of help welcome.

The lynx-eyed head waiter, prejudiced from the start against his gigantic underling, quickly discovered that salt-cellars and other small objects eluded Moss' clumsy fingers like drops of quicksilver; also, that the channels between the tables were wholly inadequate for the safe navigation of a vessel of this draft. Hence Moss' term of service would doubtless have been a very brief one, had it not been for an unforeseen event. On his way home the very first night, he broke the heads of half a dozen union pickets who had waylaid him in a dark alley, and this feat gave the strike a shock from which it died the next day.

Out of gratitude, and possibly also a desire to give the recalcitrant negroes an object-lesson, the management decided to tolerate Moss for a month. It was clearly a case of toleration. He broke more dishes than any four of the other waiters; he forgot orders; he trod on toes; and, although he was of a singularly peaceful disposition, never taking part in the multitudinous squabbles of the dining-room, the incessant gibes, sneers, and threats of his unionized associates would occasionally prove too much for even his equanimity. Then, like an infuriated gorilla, he would spring upon his tormentors, regardless of their number, and dearly indeed would they pay for their sport.

He was, moreover, a silent fellow; and his silence was not that of the well-bred waiter, but a solemn, profound, brooding, depressing thing, acquired, one could almost believe, in the African jungles where his forefathers had crept like wild beasts or squatted in superstitious terror. People, consequently, were a little afraid of him. It was told that he had once carried a piano up three flights of stairs on his back; and when he would pass down the dining-room with a seventy-pound tray balanced on the tips of three fingers as lightly as if it were a pie-pan, a certain bald-headed, white-waist-coated, pink-faced old bachelor, who made his home at the hotel, never tired of observing to strangers, with his dry little chuckle: "How'd you like to meet that boy on a lonely road, suh, afteh dark, with your gun at home?" And, in truth, Moss' huge black paw, suddenly appearing over their shoulders from behind, as he served a meal, was a trifle disconcerting to ladies with delicate nerves.

There was, however, a force of some kind, a sort of dumb nobility about the fellow, which made itself felt; and, in spite of his manifold shortcomings, he had, when his month was up, made a fairly favorable impression. Still, his fate was hanging in the balance when Fortune once more intervened in his behalf. An imaginative reporter on one of the Louisville papers, being hard pressed for a Sunday story, concocted an article entitled "A Congo King," in which he solemnly averred that the herculean waiter at the Bluegrass was the grandson of an African prince who had been captured by slavers on the upper Congo, after a desperate fight, and landed in Charleston in 1832.

From that hour Moss became a show-piece which the proprietors of the Bluegrass would not willingly have parted with. Guests almost daily asked to be shown the "Congo King." A German ethnologist who was touring the country ran down from Chicago to get some exact measurements of the royal descendant's head. An artist of State reputation painted him in what was alleged to be his grandfather's court costume--a strip of leopard-skin around his loins; and a photograph from this painting made the most popular souvenir post-card which the hotel's news-stand had ever handled.

Curiously enough, his fame did not spoil him. Indeed, for any change in him, he might have been unaware of his fame, and possibly was unaware of it. At all events, he continued to pursue the simple routine of his life. He worked seven days in the week, from six in the morning until nine at night, with a respite from two till six. Most of the hotel negroes spent this recess in shooting craps and guzzling beer in an adjacent dive, but Moss devoted it to the prosecution of an enterprise very near to his heart. He was learning to read! He could already read a bill-of-fare, of course, to any near-sighted guest who had chanced to forget his glasses; but this was merely a mnemonic trick, assisted by the position of the words on the card. He yearned to be able to read "really and truly," out of a newspaper or a book.

One afternoon, after laying off his dining-room livery and getting into his own shabby clothes,--in which few of the Bluegrass guests would have recognized their Congo King!--he set off with unusual alacrity. At the street door he paused to turn up his collar and draw down his hat-brim, and then indifferently stepped out into a pelting shower. A block away he entered a second-hand book-store and bought a greasy, dog-eared Second Reader which he had priced the day before. Stowing his purchase in an inside pocket to keep it dry, he longingly eyed a passing street-car, for he was tired; but he put the temptation aside--five cents would buy a loaf of bread or two quarts of buttermilk--and stepped out into the rain again.

A walk of ten blocks brought him to the head of an ill-smelling, narrow alley, dotted with foul pools of water and bordered with tumble-down shanties. The rain had now ceased, and the sun, beating down more fiercely than ever, was raising a pestilential reek which had brought the black denizens of the alley to their tiny stoops for a breath of comparatively fresh air. Children, the smaller ones quite naked, pattered about like ducks in the black mud.

The number of men present, considering it was midday, would have surprised any one not familiar with the fact that the residents of Goosefoot Lane plied their varied trades mostly by night. Oily-skinned and blear-eyed from heat, drink, and loss of sleep, these gentlemen of color somewhat resembled the animals of an over-traveled menagerie, blinking stupidly, staring morosely into vacancy, slapping viciously at flies, and occasionally exposing their red mouths and gleaming teeth in a wide, fierce, carnivorous yawn. Some few, in a better humor, were drinking pailed beer and shooting craps. The women held their babies and chatted with their neighbors, while now and then some fat old mammy would waddle out into the lane to settle a row among the youngsters.

It was into this atmosphere that the student took his way, nodding at an acquaintance here and there, until he reached the shanty which the payment of four dollars a month in advance entitled him to call home. An old darky sat drowsing on the stoop. There was something ape-like about his long arms, his flat, wide-nostriled nose, and the mat of gray wool which crept down his forehead to within two inches of his eyebrows. Yet, on a closer inspection, his face was human, kindly, and benevolent, and even lit with a shrewd humor.

"This you' Secum Reader, sonny?" asked old Benjy, starting from his doze as Moss thrust the book into his hand. He fumbled in his pocket for his silver-rimmed spectacles,--cherished memento of better days,--pinched the book between his thick, knotted fingers, and opened it about as gracefully as a bear would open an oyster. Then he squinted at the page with an owl-like expression, moving the book now nearer, now farther, and turning it this way and that for a better light. For he was Moss' teacher, and it would be highly injurious to his prestige for him to show any flustration over this new volume. Nevertheless, he was not quite at ease.

"Yass--book-store man di'n' cheat you. He Secum Reader," he observed astutely, after moving his lips inaudibly for a moment. "Says so--right theh--top o' the page--in plain print. An' print don' lie! 'Member that, sonny,--print don' lie. Men lies, women lies, clouds lies--say it's gwine rain when it don' do nothin' but blow up a li'l' dust--but print neveh lies. 'Cause why? 'Cause the Good Book is print. But, sonny, if you gwine git an educashum, you gotter strike out for it--strike out--strike out."

"Ain't I strikin' out?" asked Moss in an aggrieved tone.